Sequencing and Final Relay-Text

Trying to finalise my sequence for my body of work can be exasperating when the work has been so prominent in my mind for the last two years. Some times I just can't even look at it as it has all become so familiar. I need to finish off the work, get the sequence sorted, and find a final piece of relay-text for the last image. This was proving to be the most difficult part. I decided I needed a break as I just was not feeling at all creative.

But it is amazing how 24 hours can be enough for a complete turnaround and the creative breakthrough came when I was emptying the dishwasher. This snippet from Josef’s diary was tucked away in my brain just waiting to be seized upon. It seems so obvious to me now but it was buried amongst loads of research material. My final image in the sequence will have the following relay-text:

‘Amerikaner gekommen’ (Americans came).

Extract from the personal diary of Josef Kohout, 25/4/1945.

The arrival of the American forces was, of course, welcomed by the homosexual prisoners after so much torture and degradation. But it was also a false dawn. Homosexual men were not able to claim compensation from the German government after the war like other groups of concentration camp prisoners. Some men were even sent back to prison to complete their sentences for the 'crime' of homosexuality. The time spent in the camps had no bearing on their length of sentence; unlike the Nazi camp guards whose time spent in the camps was counted towards their pension! Just stop and think about that fact for a moment!

In the decade after the war western governments stance on homosexuality as a criminal offence actually tightened and many men who were traumatised and criminalised were not able to speak out about their inhumane treatment. They had to suffer in silence until Gay political groups began to fight for their rights and speak out against injustice.

I may need to include this information in the handout at the end of the image sequence as I don't want the impression to be formed by viewers who might think that liberation of the camps put an end to oppression; but at the same time I think the works needs some glimmer of hope and an uplifting end to the sequence - and the men were undoubtedly overjoyed to be rescued from the shocking abuses they'd been subjected too. 

Methodology of 'Target Practice' project

In my last discussion with my tutor he suggested that I might want to describe my artistic practice as a process in the form of a methodological diagram. I think this is a good idea as it would capture my artistic step by step process from research through experimentation to output. A lot of work has gone into the final images that I made for the 'Target Practice' project and it seems a shame for all that effort to be buried away.

The methodology for my 'Target Practice' project consisted of three phases:

• Initiatory phase
• Developmental phase
• Output phase

These phases were broken down into sub processes that comprised six stages:

1. Initiatory phase: interrogation
   
   This involved research on my chosen theme or topic and required a literature search of academic libraries and popular culture for relevant texts; this included academic papers, biographies, primary sources, photographs, documentaries and consideration of other artist's work that inspired or made a connection with my chosen project.
   
   
   In the case of the 'Target Practice' work online Holocaust museum archives and LGBTQ group archives were queried and compared to hetero-normative accounts of the Holocaust in order to highlight previously ignored LGBTQ hidden histories.
   
   
2. Initiatory phase: selection
   
   Large quantities of data was amassed during the interrogation process that was sifted and read in order to be categorised. This was for the specific generation of ideas for art pieces or for supplementary background material that may not have been used in the visual creative process.
   
   Supplementary background material was retained for academic purposes, being invaluable for informing my practice, providing contextualisation and academic rigour. Often a text would inform my understanding or open up new paths of investigation which generated another stage 1 literature search producing more texts for stage 2 selection.
   
   
   Supplementary material was later deployed in a magazine handout for the 'Target Practice exhibition'. This was in addition to the main images and relay-text handouts that accompanied the work. The magazine format allowed for much of the supplementary material, such as old photographs and contextual history, to be included that did not form part of the exhibition itself.
   
   
3. Developmental phase: mental process
   
   
   Having read and considered my selected texts, a creative mental process took place that was a combination of conscious and unconscious thinking; the conscious element involved making focused artistic choices through knowledge acquired at the stage 2 selection; this included prior artistic experience accumulated through creation of previous projects and academic study. The unconscious part of the process was via the lens of lived personal experience, an affinity with my subject matter and exposure to art in general. The conflation of these two mental processes brought about creative outcomes that can sometimes seem logical and at other times to the artist/maker to be shrouded in a form of 'oblique random strategy'.
   
   At this stage reflection on events in the biography 'The Men With The Pink Triangle' was my main focus for the 'Target Practice' project. The accumulation of supplemental reading material, including Holocaust biographies from both heterosexual and homosexual survivors helped to inform my reflections and bring both types of conscious and unconscious mental processes together.
   
   
4. Developmental phase: hands-on experimentation
   
   
   In the hands-on experimentation stage, ideas that had formed during the stage 3 mental process, enabled me to make images or props for images. This process of transitioning a purely mental process into a hands-on physical one is symbiotic and involved numerous false starts and creative failures that fed back into the stage 3 mental process. This back and forth 'creative play feedback loop' was the major component of the stage 3&4 developmental phase.
   
   
   For the 'Target Practice' work the paper folding element grew out of a dissatisfaction with the images for a shoot that I'd organised with a model to wear my props. The images did not connect in a visceral sense with my concept and by revisiting my mental process I was able to envisage an alternative strategy that helped to evolve the work conceptually. This outcome could not have been arrived at by mental process alone. It was through the use of hands-on prop making and experimentation feeding back into the mental process, that further hands-on experimentation was generated.
   
   
   Similarly my choice of photographing the 'Target Practice' folded triangles began with an indoor shoot on a set background of tiled wallpaper, that through the symbiotic mental/hands-on experimentation process, grew into using an anonymous woodland setting as my backdrop. This choice grew from further reading during the stage 2 selection process regarding ethical considerations when making Holocaust art projects. I wanted to place an ethical boundary around the project to connote that the 'Target Practice' work is not documentary but an artistic response to a biography; I had to establish visually in some way that LGBTQ hidden histories are not usually part of the wider hetero-normative mainstream historical narrative; the anonymous woodland symbolises this artist imposed ethical boundary.
   
   
5. Developmental phase: post-production
   
   
   This involved the digital treatment of images after they have been made and consisted of minor touching-up to large scale image manipulation, dependant on the requirements to finalise each image or project.
   
   
6. Output phase: presentation/post-production
   
   
   Once the project was completed then decisions regarding how to present the work needed to be be made. Different outcomes such as work for a gallery wall, a book or a magazine each have very different production requirements. The finalised images were post-produced from their master digital file to printing sizes appropriate for their intended outcomes. This also involved colour balancing and re-tweaking of histograms to ensure as close as possible consistency across digital and analogue platforms.
   
   Once the presentation output(s) are established considerable design work took place such as magazine format, sequencing and style; meeting the requirements for an exhibition were many, including the need to hang and display work appropriate to the size and shape of the gallery space and producing handouts and posters containing artwork.
   
   
   The choice to output the work into a magazine format instead of a hand-made book was derived from ethical considerations made at stage 3&4 of the developmental phase. It did not feel right to me that work made in respect of the Holocaust should be placed into a hand-made photo-book; books that are often considered collectable and objects of beauty. Producing the 'Target Practice' magazine required very different design and presentation considerations to the larger images for the gallery wall. The images for the magazine had to be sized much smaller and had different output and colour parameters for print on paper.